Cookbooks, and the advice industry as a whole, can sometimes have the opposite of their desired effect on their target audience. Instead of feeling inspired, the reader just feels defeated. It’s too hard and I’m too tired, thinks the busy mom (a marketing cliche in itself) as she leafs through the latest food magazine while waiting for the pizza to arrive.

Lucinda Scala Quinn has spent her career doling out home-cooking advice — and raising three sons. As the executive director of food and entertaining (what a title, no?) for Martha Stewart’s many Omnimedia projects, she hosted “Everyday Food” on PBS, oversaw recipe testing at Martha Stewart Living, and wrote four cookbooks. The latest is “Mad Hungry Cravings,” a follow-up to her popular “Mad Hungry: Feeding Men and Boys.”

She worked on that book, and the “Mad Hungry” television show that followed, through her three sons’ teen years (Luca is now 18, Miles, 22 and Calder, 26) .

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“The the studio was near the high school, and the boys would stop by on their way home. It’s real, it’s just what has been happening to me for the past 25 years,” says Quinn from a Salt Lake City hotel room on her book tour.

In the epilogue to the new book, Calder Quinn offers some insight into what it was like to grow up in a food-centric New York City home. “If I managed to slip out of the house before oatmeal was forced on me, I had a bacon, egg, and cheese waiting for me on Broadway.”

Now grown, Calder is “the most frugal cook” says his mom. “He loves to conserve on his resources and he loves to have people around him. I was so proud — the kid just posted a gorgeous flat-roasted chicken on Instagram.”

That’s what she’s hoping to promote as she travels the country promoting “Mad Hungry Cravings” — not guilt, but the pride and pleasure that comes from cooking.

“I’m really wanting people to get in the kitchen and reclaim cooking for themselves,” says Quinn.

So how does she manage a two-month book tour?

“I geared up for this schedule. I swim and get good sleep. It’s my job to stay as functional as possible. You can’t just wing it any more, girl. Forget fat, I just want to feel good,” says Quinn. “I don’t have throwaway meals. If I can’t find something interesting to eat, I’ll have fruit and nuts and nourish myself.”

“Nourish” is a word that comes up often in conversation with Quinn. She found comfort in the kitchen after her family moved when she was in 10th grade.

“My own mother helped me stay connected to the person I am. she always said ‘Make the best of what you have.’ I decided when those kids came out, I was going to do the best I could to nourish them physically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally.”

But she realizes that not every mother can fulfill that kind of commitment. She hears from lots of women who tell her they never wanted to cook. Some feel guilty, some just preferred to focus on other things.

But she says it’s never too late, whether you want to eat better for health, or inspire the next generation to cook.

“I’m seeing people who aren’t just saying ‘I have to cook because I have kids,’ they are saying ‘I want to cook,’ “ she says.

She tells how a 20-something woman came with her mother to a cooking class and the mom confessed she had never cooked. She told her daughter, “I didn’t do this, and I hope you don’t miss this opportunity. It brought them together,” Quinn says. “I hope our legacy is that the next generation has learned you don’t really have to have guilt — it’s still a teachable opportunity. This next generation — they see being able to cook as empowering as having a Ph.D. in mathematics.”